Minorities Quotes - Page 29

• One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

  Langston Hughes

  Race, Helping, Members

  Langston Hughes (2002). “The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The later simple stories”, p.163, University of Missouri Press

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• The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Winning, Thug

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.53, Penguin

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• [The Democrats] will say that the Reagan administrtion has given benefits to the rich at the expense of the poor - a term that they define broadly to include middle-income people, women, minorities, the aged, the young, farmers, steelworkers, and others.

  Herbert Stein

  People, Income, Benefits

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• Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? ... I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.

  Martin Buber

  Christian, Religious, Mean

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• Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.

  Howard Zinn

  Running, Democracies Have, Rights

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

  Thomas Sowell

  Hurt, Children, People

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• So I'm very happy if my words can ever inspire or empower someone who considers themselves an oppressed minority. We are all the same and we all want the same things: the right to be happy, to be just who we want to be and to love who we want to love.

  Beyonce Knowles

  Empowering, Inspire, Want

  "Beyonce's Out Cover Story: 10 Quotes That Give Us Life" by John Walker, www.mtv.com. April 08, 2014.

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• So long as millions of human beings in every country has to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so called “equality before the law” remains a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a “right over one's own person,” for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Country, Law, Long

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• Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social union.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Views, Order, Political

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.1, AK Press

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• If an action must be taken that will benefit the majority at the cost of the minority, is it morally indefensible? If an action taken for the benefit of a majority occurs at the expense of a minority, is it moral action?

  Garth Nix

  Taken, Majority, Cost

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• In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts.

  Karen DeCrow

  Color, People, Want

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• Nevertheless, I don't hesitate to say that elections in Germany are decided in the center, not on the fringes and not in the accumulation of minority interests.

  Peer Steinbruck

  Germany, Election, Fringe

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• In any period it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends ... They are still a minority, though a larger one, who are capable of endorsing such first-hand judgement by genuine personal response.

  F. R. Leavis

  Appreciation, Art, Hands

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• Finding Mecca in America weaves social theory and concrete ethnography into a significant contribution on Muslims in the United States, illuminating broader questions about the integration of minority and immigrant groups along the way. This is an important work and a joy to read.

  Eboo Patel

  America, Joy, Important

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• For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Real, Book

  Ray Bradbury (1990). “Fahrenheit 451: Curriculum Unit”

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• I guess 35 years ago, I thought we had more of a democracy than we actually do. Majority support doesn't help unless the majority is active and votes - but the opposition minority votes a much greater proportion, so we often lose by a narrow margin.

  Gloria Steinem

  Years, Support, Democracy

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• The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Locks, Individual

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• Conscience: A small, still voice that makes minority reports.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Voice, Minority Report, Stills

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• If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Writing, Hands, Choices

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• Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Political

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

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• Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority... Supere aude! Dare to use your own understanding!is thus the motto of the Enlightenment.

  Immanuel Kant

  Knowledge, Men, Self

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• Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace.

  Florence King

  Sex, Mean, Race

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• The signs of the antichrist spirit are clear. They emerge in this fashion: A significant minority then an actual majority, of the people in a society begin to throw off the restraints of history, then the restraints of written law, then accepted standards of morality, then established religion, and, finally God Himself.

  Pat Robertson

  Christian, Fashion, Religious

  Pat Robertson (1994). “The Collected Works of Pat Robertson: The New Millennium/the New World Order/the Secret Kingdom/3 Books in 1”, Bristol Park Books

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• Those who are anti-God and anti-Christian in America have infiltrated the highest levels of the educational establishment. They have a philosophical commitment to eliminating any vestige of biblical Christianity from American thought and life. They are well-positioned, well-funded and well-connected. They are a very small minority in America, yet their level of commitment is rarely matched among Christians.

  Rick Scarborough

  Christian, Religious, Educational

  Rick Scarborough (2000). “Enough is Enough: A Call to Christian Involvement”

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• I'M HOPELESS, because I've lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I'm not surprised and at some point my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails.

  Benjamin Watson

  Children, Long, Racism

  Benjamin Watson (2015). “Under Our Skin: Getting Real about Race. Getting Free from the Fears and Frustrations that Divide Us.”, p.16, NavPress

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